Anti-vegan crazy gets published: I’ll show you ’scaremongering’ David Martosko
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Yesterday, the director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, David Martosko, took to the pages of the Detroit News to launch a vitriolic attack against “meat hating” vegans with nefarious, apocalyptic, anti-Thanksgiving intentions. It takes a special kind of crazy to write what Martosko did, and a special kind of bad newspaper to publish it. My response to his op-ed won’t convince you to become a “meat hating” vegan – see here for that. But let me see if I can make you dislike him in less than 1,000 words.
Martosko starts his op-ed by kicking you when you’re down. “Sadly,” he reminds us, “this year some Americans have little to be thankful for.” In case you forgot, while you were enjoying time with family and friends yesterday, we’re fighting two wars and struggling through a depressed economy, double-digit unemployment and unprecedented home foreclosures. Why are you giving thanks? Your life sucks right now.
But Martosko doesn’t want to cancel Thanksgiving altogether. Rather, he wants to be sure you gobble up as much turkey as you can this year (and we’ll get to his incentive for that in a moment). Given that veganism and meat-free holidays have garnered a lot of attention recently, Martosko wants to remind us that vegans “think you’re cruel, compassionless, brutish and sub-human.”
Untrue. I do not think that. Nor, I dare say, do thousands of other very rational people who don’t use animal products. I don’t think veganism is founded in compassion, or making judgment calls on one’s brutishness. Fundamentally, it has to do with well-reasoned arguments and the rights of animals.
Ah – but then again, Martosko isn’t talking about all vegans. He only thinks he is. Martosko is actually referring to PETA – who’ve been busying themselves with banned advertisements and other such disastrous forays into “activism” recently. Unfortunately, Martosko doesn’t seem to realize that ‘vegan’ and ‘PETA’ aren’t actually synonyms. Plenty of people do activism, or eschew animal products and believe in animal rights, without having anything to do with women clad in lettuce leaves, handing out Tofurkey roasts. In fact, I’ve always argued that believing in animal rights means not adopting PETA’s tactics.
Martosko then goes off on a seemingly unrelated tangent – and don’t get me started on the structural incoherence of his attempt at journalism – and critiques the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a non-profit organization that endorses veganism for health reasons. This year, he laments, they’ve released a vegan Thanksgiving menu that “supposedly prevents cancer” but “not surprisingly, is short on proof.” Okay. Seriously? Because the American Cancer Society suggests that vegan eating can reduce your risk of some cancers, with plenty of empirical data to support the idea.
And after all, shouldn’t Martosko be a little bit more generous towards PCRM, whom he deems a “phony” group? After all, his own organization, the Center for Consumer Freedom, has some explaining to do on the phony front. Like, why is your primary financial backer a major tobacco company? For the record, pretty much all of the Center’s funding comes either from Big Tobacco or the food industry. Martosko even admitted it, when asked in a 2006 interview:
“Well, I know that we never accepted money from utilities or coal companies. I don’t know exactly which companies in the food sector support us. You know, it’s not my job to know. I really don’t pay attention. I do know that the vast majority of our, say, institutional funding, comes from the food sector. Beyond that, I just don’t know.”
I get it, David. You’re just preaching what you’ve been funded to preach. But vegans aren’t meat-hating crazies (well, maybe PETA members, but remember that lesson I taught you about synonyms?). If anyone’s crazy, it’d be the director of the group that actually advocates against lowering the legal blood alcohol limit, so that we can all go out and “enjoy a drink on Friday night.” I hope residents of Martosko’s neighborhood stayed off the roads yesterday. A ranting, drunk, cigarette-smoking, high-on-tryptophan zealot is a special kind of crazy, and a special kind of driving hazard.
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all he needs is some green smoothies and some leafy greens in him and he’ll change his ways
but on a serious note – maybe it’s just me, but the fact that Tyson foods is one of his employer’s biggest contributors hurts his credibility. I highly doubt he’s going on several TV news networks, radio programs, and writing columns in newspapers just because doesn’t like PETA. I dunno’, just my opinion (:
Martosko has stated that he has nothing against vegans… but then publishes this gratuitous attack. It’s not the first contradiction in his glorious career.
Martosko was a talk radio producer with a background in opera. He landed a job at a DC lobbyist’s PR firm. Relying on his extensive scientific background in crooning opera and directing morning rants on AM talk radio, he declared himself to be CCF’s “Director of Research” and began his career as a liar for hire.
Weighing in at over 230lbs, Martosko attacked the CSPI as part of CCF’s campaign to downplay the dangers of obesity.
Despite an extensive rap sheet of moving violations, including reckless driving offenses and a conviction for DUI, Martosko viciously attacked Mothers Against Drunk Driving. He courageously fought against the unjust and unnecessary nature of drunk driving penalties, and waged war against blood alcohol limits.
He urges pregnant women to eat more mercury-contaminated fish. It’s perfectly safe, the CDC is lying to you!
He urges consumers to rally against the tyranny of the American Cancer Society, and to hop in that tanning bed as much as you like! Sunshine is good for you, and tanning beds are just bottled sunshine! And skin cancer is overdramatized, it’s not fatal as often as those silly scientists would have you believe. Trust me, I’m an opera– er, I’m a Director of Research!
And now, having thoroughly slaughtered any surviving ethics he may have once had, he’s tackling the most insidious threat ever to our way of life: not eating meat.
This time, the strategy is slightly different. Martosko and CCF’s attack isn’t really directed at vegans. Martosko is very aware of the difference between PETA and vegans, but he wants to blur that line as much as possible.
Martosko and CCF’s real target is animal protection groups in general, and the Humane Society of the United States in particular.
These groups interfere with his clients’ ability to raise sickly puppies by the thousands to ship in trailers to pet stores. They complicate slaughterhouses’ jobs by exposing trivial things like ramming sick and dying cattle with forklifts to coax them onto the killing floor so they can become part of our kids’ school lunches. They annoy factory farmers with petty demands to stop stabbing cows with a pitchfork, or to give chickens room to turn around once or twice in their tortured, miserable lives.
CCF and Martosko’s clients want HSUS out of the picture so they can wring every last bloodstained penny out of the tortured flesh of the animals they use.
But it’s not easy demonizing an organization that rescues puppies, crusades tirelessly against animal cruelty, and exposes unhealthy and unsafe practices in slaughterhouses.
So, instead, CCF attacks PETA with their PETAKillsAnimals.com website and a media blitz designed to demonize PETA and alienate their supporters. PETA’s in-your-face activism is less popular with the mainstream public. They’re an easier target.
Now it’s just a matter of finding a common link between PETA and HSUS, two very different organizations. They both care about animals, but so do the majority of people with a soul… the general public won’t buy that.
Aha! Right-wing conspiracy theories are all the rage right now. Convince Americans that PETA and HSUS are both part of a sinister vegan plot to take over our country and destroy our very way of life!
The vegan militia are on the march, with HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle leading the charge! They’re nutty vegan activists! Look at them! They’re not like you and me… They don’t eat meat! They’re w-e-i-r-d! They’re a danger to hamburgers, hot dogs and all things American!
And that’s the core of CCF’s strategy to attack HSUS. PETA is bad. PETA is vegan. Vegans must be bad. HSUS is vegan. Therefore, HSUS is bad. Boooo, vegan HSUS-PETA!
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that what Martosko is doing hasn’t been carefully planned out and analyzed by the professional character assassins at Berman & Company.
Martosko is despicable. He’s mercenary. He’s a liar. He’s evil… But he is NOT crazy.